The Mom Stop: Cracks are showing in glass ceiling

My great-grandmother, who was born at the turn of the 20th century in northern Minnesota, always wanted to be a writer.

At least, that is what I am told. She was the first college-educated woman in my family. But, as a young Midwestern woman in the early 1920s who went on to become a farmer’s wife, she chose a career that was seemingly more accessible: Teaching. She taught farm kids in a one-room schoolhouse near rural Fertile, Minnesota. It was a place where kids traveled great distances to get to school, where lunch meant potatoes wrapped in foil on the school’s single wood-burning oven in a schoolhouse without electricity. It was a place where many people, herself included, first spoke Norwegian or Swedish before learning English.

By the time my mother chose her career 50 years later, the world was a different place. The 1970s were in full swing, welcoming with it a wave of women’s liberation and choice. It was OK to be a working woman, a working mom. Women could “do it all,” my mom has said, although even still, she felt her choices were limited. If you weren’t going to become a nurse or a teacher, secretary or a handful of other “female” positions, it was tough, she said. Ultimately, she chose to become an occupational therapist, a career she’s had for almost 40 years.

When I started my own career, there was never any doubt what it was I wanted to do — I’ve known I wanted to be a writer since I was 10. There were never any hurdles to be jumped or barriers to break. That’s because of the female journalists that have gone before me, the women who have set out and made names for themselves by doing more than just writing for the “women’s news” and society pages. The working women before me had paved the path for others to follow.

My glass ceiling has long been shattered. But that doesn’t mean barriers don’t exist any more.

Talk to any woman about sexual harassment in the workplace, about the percentage of men who get promotions vs. the women, the wage disparity that does exist between the sexes.

Despite the strides made in equality, on average, women still earn 82 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But women continue to move upward.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Hillary Clinton shattering the glass ceiling. It was a historic moment on July 28 when Clinton accepted the presidential nomination for the Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention. Regardless of political leanings, it’s a move that could have repercussions on women in the workplace for years to come. If a woman can hold the highest political office in the country, what can’t she do?

It was for this reason that I let my 7-year-old daughter stay up well past her bedtime to watch Clinton’s acceptance speech. As we sat on my bed and I brushed her hair, I explained to my daughter that the woman on TV may become our next president, and that if she is elected, she would be the first female president.

My daughter sat in silence.

“Does that mean I can be the second, Mommy?” she asked.

For a future generation of working women, regardless of the election’s outcome, the ultimate glass ceiling has already started to fall.

— Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Reach her at lydia.seabolavant@tuscaloosanews.com.